The major parts of balance transfer
deals are stable this year, a CreditCards.com survey of 100 major cards finds,
and with a Fed rate hike looming, cardholders who carry balances would be wise
to lock in a good deal.

This year's survey of online balance
transfer offers found that the market norms remain the same as a year ago: The
most-common offers let consumers transfer a balance at 0 percent interest for
about 12 months for a fee of 3 percent. However, a deeper dive into offer terms reveals the importance of comparison shopping for a new
balance transfer card. CreditCards.com found that post-introductory balance
transfer rates vary greatly, issuers have specific transfer restrictions and balance
transfer offers change quickly.

Survey findings
Our
survey of a market-representative group of 100 popular credit cards found:

Balance
transfers are the norm: 88 of the
100 surveyed cards allow balance transfers and 44 of those cards encourage transfers
with temporary rate cuts. Last year 85 out of 100 cards allowed transfers and
44 included lower introductory (teaser) rates.

Zero-percent
deals abound: As in our balance transfer survey conducted in 2014, 40 cards offer 0-percent teaser rates. Another four cards
offer lower-than-normal balance transfer rates (between 2.99-10.99 percent) for
a set introductory period. Most of the remaining cards offer balance transfers
without lowering rates -- and three actually raise their rates for those
transferring balances.

Expect a
fee: The most common fee -- 3 percent of
the transferred amount -- is charged by 50 out of 88 balance transfer-capable
cards. Another seven cards charge 3 percent of each transfer with no minimum.
Caps on fees, once the norm in the industry, are all but gone. In our survey, only
cards from USAA capped their fees, at $200.

Use it or
lose it: New cardholders who want to make
transfers will have to do so quickly. Of the 44 deal-offering cards, 28 give
cardholders 90 days or fewer to win a rate cut by transferring a balance -- just
like last year. However, the average length of time consumers have to make
promotion-eligible transfers has edged down to 4.5 months from five months last
year. Some card issuers, including Chase and Wells Fargo, allow you to transfer
a balance after the intro period, but then boost their fee on some cards from 3
percent to 5 percent.

Fee-free,
but no discount: No-fee and 0 percent-deals don't go
hand-in-hand. Twelve cards in this year's survey do not charge balance transfer
fees, but only two of the 12 also offer reduced rates deals: Capital One QuicksilverOne Rewards and Slate from Chase.

Post-intro
rates: The range of post-introductory
balance transfer APRs remains great,
from as low as 7.99 percent to as high as 26.99 percent. Balance transfer rates
are almost always based on an individual's creditworthiness.

For those who take advantage of a
0-percent balance transfer card offer, the savings can be substantial.

CARDS WITH NO TRANSFER FEE

Capital
One QuicksilverOne Rewards card

SonyCard
Visa from Capital One

Capital
One Platinum card

Capital
One Venture Rewards card

Capital
One Secured MasterCard

Journey
Student Rewards from Capital One

Spark
Miles Select by Capital One

Spark
Classic from Capital One

Capital
One Spark Cash Select for Business

Navy
Federal Credit Union Platinum card

Navy
Federal Credit Union cashRewards Visa

PenFed
Promise Visa

Take, for example, a consumer who
has an existing $7,500 balance. Let's say that a consumer transfers the balance
to a new card with the most common offer found in our survey: a card with a
12-month, 0-percent introductory rate and a 3 percent fee. If the consumer pays
it off in a year, payments will total $7,725, including the fee. Compare that
to the consumer who starts with the same debt, but pays if off using a card with
a typical 15 percent APR card for 12 months. That consumer would pay $8,123.25 --
$398.25 more than if he had used a zero-percent introductory rate card.

Offers may
change more once rates rise
The Federal Reserve is expected to
begin raising its federal funds rate -- the basis for most credit card interest
rates -- as early as December. Once that happens, balance-carrying cardholders will
see higher post-introductory interest rates and maybe even different promotional
offers.

"I think we will see different credit card
issuers react differently," said Alex Johnson, senior analyst for Mercator
Advisory Group's Credit Advisory Service. As interest rates increase, "there
may be more pressure to adjust offer terms," he added. Some issuers "might
change terms to offset changing deposit rates, but at the same time I think
there will be other issuers who might even make their terms more attractive so
they can stand out among the competition."

Moshe Orenbuch, an analyst with
financial research group Credit Suisse, agrees but doesn't think offers will
change immediately after the Fed starts raising rates -- especially because rate
increases are expected to be small at first, starting with a hike of 0.25
percent (25 basis points).

"I don't think a few basis points
will materialize in major offer changes," he said. "At some point that will
start shortening the teaser rate period, but not right away. I don't think the
first or second rate increase will affect offers."

Issuers
fine-tuning offers
Even
before the Fed acts, card issuers regularly tweak balance transfer offers. Of the 96 cards surveyed both this year and last, 30 have
revised balance transfer terms and offers compared to what was recorded in late
2014.

Some revisions resulted in better
balance transfer deals for consumers, such as the Wells Fargo Cash
Back college card, which now has a 0-percent teaser rate good for 12 months
instead of six. Since 2014, Navy Federal Credit Union has added balance
transfer options to its cashRewards Visa and Platinum cards, both of which
boast introductory 0-percent interest offers and no transfer fees.

Other
changes led to worse deals for consumers. For example, the PNC Points Visa
Business card introductory offer is now only nine months long compared to 13
months last year, and both the Blue Sky from American Express and Discover It
Chrome for Students cards no longer offer limited time, no-interest balance
transfer deals to new cardholders.

Note post-intro
rates before applying
With
the threat of rising interest rates on the horizon, using a 0-percent balance transfer offer can be a great way to slash interest costs while paying down a debt.

"It allows you to put more money
toward the principal and pay it down faster," said Kevin Gallegos, vice
president of Phoenix operations for the Freedom Financial Network. "If someone
is on top of it and acknowledges the window of time they have to pay off the
balance, it can be a very useful tool. Just be mindful of the terms."

Three cards actually make it more expensive to make a balance
transfer than a purchase:

Internal transfers often banned: Of the 28 card-issuing companies, 16 won't let you transfer a balance to another card within their network.

No grace period:
If you're not lucky enough to have a 0-percent offer, and transfer a balance to
a card that charges interest, that interest will kick in immediately. No card
in our survey has a grace period.

No rewards: No card in our survey lets you earn rewards for a balance transfer.

The restrictions are "standard credit card
practices to protect against 'churning' -- using credit cards to move money in
order to gain access to cash," explained Navy Federal Credit Union spokeswoman
Emily Bigham. "Without these safeguards cardholders could earn rewards and pay
off the balance using the same funds they received from the transfer."

There also might be a delay between
the time you open the account and when the transfer takes place. Eight issuers -- American
Express, Capital One, Chase, Citibank, USAA, TD Bank, Fifth Third Bank and
State Farm Bank -- say to expect a wait of 10-14 days. The State Farm Visa
student card says it can take up to 30 days.

A sampling
of 29 credit card offers sent by mail to CreditCards.com employees found that,
in most cases, the balance transfer rates and the length of promotional offers
were better than terms posted online for
the same cards. While this review is not scientific, it suggests that consumers
should consider different sources of offers before
making a card selection, because the more personalized a card offer is, the
better it may be.

"A lot of the online offers out there are
generic," Johnson explains. "But the offers that people get in the mail are the
result of a prescreening process that happens when the bank is specifically creating
the offers, and generally that means that offer may be more attractive to the
cardholders who receive them."

Survey methodology
The 2015 Credit Card Balance Transfer Survey of 100 U.S. credit cards was
conducted Oct. 20-30, 2015, by CreditCards.com. The 100-card survey pool is the
same group of cards used to calculate CreditCards.com's Weekly Rate Report, and is a representative sampling
of cards from all major U.S. card issuers. Information was gathered from the
cards' terms and conditions documents, any publicly available cardholder
agreements and phone calls to issuers.

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